From my research material I found and isolated parts that mentioned and problematized the western standards in African societies. Traditional western feminist values come from the legacy of European enlightenment and in simple terms these values presuppose a western liberal democracy as a form of government. (Parekh 1992.) More exactly put a western liberal democracy that has a high respect for universal human rights. This is of course a simplification of things but still important to mention because those kinds of values are not dominant in all African states, nor are they always wished upon (Leslie 2006, 7-8).
One of the explanations that AFF is giving to the question why they don’t feel that western standards are so easily transferred to African societies and African feminism is the huge influence of religion in many parts of Africa. I mentioned already before in chapter number 3.3 how religious fundamentalism is prone to opposing women’s emancipations and social equality in many cases. This is also true in the religious communities and groups that would not be subscribed as fundamentalist.
Religion is at the core of people’s lives, communities and societies, and thus for many it is sacrosanct and difficult to criticize or interrogate” (African feminist forum conference report, 2010 page 23).
The quote above encapsulates the idea. This is seen as a big challenge for African feminist struggle against religious fundamentalism. In their own words if this issue could be addressed in the proper manner and the religious communities could be confronted and also challenged in the issues of gender equality on a neutral territory the outcome might be encouraging and the feminist issues might get a lot better response.
African feminist forum wants to emphasize that the problem is not only the vide spread of religions like Christianity and Islam but the traditional religions has to be also studied upon and questioned. AFF hopes for an open dialogue.
There are gaps in our analyses of African traditional religions and practices, and their points of convergence with organized religions from the global north and east. It is important to situate and interrogate the oppression of African women that derives from traditional religions, not only Christianity and Islam (African feminist forum conference report, 2010 page 23)
By this the organization likes to point out that issues of oppression in the African continent are unique and in the name of the postcolonial feminist heritage one must be able to study these issues from a vantage point of an insider. This also demands not to make assumptions and judgments with the authority of an oppressor based on western traditional feminist standards. As an example of a practice that can be used as an example and that has its roots both in Islamic fate and in old tribal traditions is female genital mutilation (FGM). The reasons why for example this cultural tradition is still performed varies hugely in different areas around the continent. Everyone trying to fight this problem would be powerless in making precautionary measures or in trying to provide education and enlightenment without understanding the underlying reasons and the importance of the tradition in various areas. The tradition is tightly linked to gender rights and is obviously a women’s issue. That is why AFF feels that this analysis should be made by African feminist researchers and activists.
According to AFF the western standards are imposed on Africa by many actors. Those are for example The United Nations, WHO, various development cooperation organizations and other NGO`s. AFF is not condemning the presence of those actors in Africa because their influence is also valuable to the development of the whole continent and especially to the social position of women in the African continent. AFF wants to state in their material how problematic it is when cultural hegemony is taking
off breeding ground from cultural relativism that has a big role in the African feminist identity. The issue of female genital mutilation is one of the examples where this kind of thinking can be detected. (Report of the first African feminist forum 2006 page 12-13.) Western standards easily condemn cultural practices as “harmful”.
The question of FGM is difficult and multilateral in many ways. The practice is widely condemned with all of its health risks and other serious outcomes that girls and women who go through the operation have to endure. The problem for AFF is in naming of the tradition and how the tradition is medically labeled by the actors like WHO. Naming is highly political. (Walley 1997, 407).The term “circumcision” for the operation feels like an understatement to many when it is that way compared to male circumcision where boys loose a part of their foreskin. The difference is quite radical when girls actually may permanently lose all sexual sensation. The terms torture and mutilation on the other hand suggest that for example parents deliberately want to hurt their children when they perform this procedure. This is coherent with Signe Arnfreds idea (Arnfred 2001) how first world women need third world women as mirror images so that they can feel superiority to uneducated and oppressed third world women. The term mutilation is just enough repulsive to emphasize the horrific consequences of the tradition. From the view point of the women who get educated about the disadvantages of these procedures the term may feel extremely judgmental. Walley recaps this by saying that the term circumcision refers to relativistic tolerance and mutilation implies moral outrage.
(Walley 1997, 407-408)
Example of cultural labia of African women. WHO defines the practice of elongating the labia minora among the Banda and other bantu speaking communities in eastern and southern Africa as female genital mutilation. The WHO classifies and condemns this practice as type IV FGM. It lumps this procedure together with FGM procedures that pose health risks to women. WHO disregards that these practices have enhanced sexual pleasure for women, and expanded their perceptions of themselves as sexual beings. … … WHO in essence wrote this African practice of sexual enhancement into the broad negative rubric of
“harmful cultural practices”. (Report of the first African feminist forum 2006, page 13.)
The practice that is mentioned in the quote is called “elongating the labia minora”. It is also called labia stretching or labia pulling. The purpose of this practice is to enhance the size of women’s labia minora and this is widely believed to be a sexual enhancement for both partners, but especially to women. The practice does not involve
offensive physical violence against women and according to AFF it is really contradictory to label it as mutilation as WHO has done. In cases like this western standards are not only seen as foreign and unfitting for African feminist agenda, but also misguided and uninformed. (Mwenda 2006, 341-357.)
One of the reasons why western standards then are so present and have such a big influence in Africa are all the development aid cooperation’s and development funding that is focused to African continent at these present years. Africa is one of the largest recipients of development cooperation resource flows (OECD, 2014). African feminism criticizes development programs, because they accusingly exclude women because by reinforcing women’s dependency and hindering their autonomy. Development issues are relevant and important to the African continent for the obvious reasons. In Arica women are impacted by the unequal distribution of material resources. Especially rural women need the help that development cooperation is able to provide them such as a possibility to own land and education. The whole development enterprise (either done from the Marxist or liberal point of view) has its root in the enlightenment thought. The approach came from an idea that after the first and second world wars development of least developed countries could be achieved through adoption of western economic and political systems. (Marchand & Parpart 1995, 11.) The Marxist who criticized the big role of capitalist economy and the international capital in this process still saw the process of development in quite similar way as a linear process. First countries are underdeveloped but by time and with the help of certain measures they become developed through a logical and consistent process. Developed countries were and are seen as modern, industrialized and rational actors. This kind of simplified approach to development has of course been criticized and challenged many times after its golden era and new ways of theorizing development have emerged ( in the academic field and also among actual operators in the field of development), but still this kind of thinking precedes in some cases. (Marchand & Parpart 1995 11-12.) The outcome and the reason why AFF sees this as a bad thing is that for many years the whole discourse and all the practical ways of doing development cooperation have been made from the vantage point of western knowledge claims. This sadly means also according to AFF that the knowledge from the south has been dismissed and silenced.
When the operating NGO`s and other organizations have their origin in the west and developed countries, the actions and ethics behind the policies of those organizations also come from the west. The people working in the organizations have to commit to those ethics and values. This according to AFF in the worst case scenario makes them unable to sympathize or connect whit local actors who might also have a feminist agenda. This is because western feminist agenda is seen as negative thing inside certain communities and this hinders the co-operation. (Report of the first African feminist forum 2006, page 22.)
The left in the Europe and the US in general and donors in particular, have accepted the appropriation of human rights discourse by fundamentalists and enabled them to continue making their claims to speak on behalf of their communities. In so doing they de-legitimize women and other progressive forces from within the communities from establishing different ways of understanding community identity. Thus accusation such as: “you are feminist and therefore western and not part of this community”, often go unchallenged.
(Report of the first African feminist forum 2006, page 22.)
Culture is comprehended in today’s Africa according to AFF as a product of habits and reinterpretations of historical colonial authorities and western powers. The statement is that those habits have intertwined with the practices and code of conducts of African male patriarchs and the outcome is African “culture”. According to the AFF the huge influence of orthodox religions like Christianity and Islam have made African people reject their original values and customs. This is because they were forced to become more modern and civilized and try to adopt the habits of their colonial masters. (Report of the first African feminist forum 2006 page 11-12.)
The African culture is understood as a hard thing to combine with the attempts to promote human rights in African societies. AFF wants to see culture as an important part of African feminist identity and because of this there is a clear contradiction.
African feminist forum sees this contradiction also in its own actions. The plurality of different kind of backgrounds might be the biggest challenge.
In feminist legal studies, culture is often viewed as a deviation from the path of human rights. Scholars from south have demonstrated effectively how “first world“feminists have represented them as women as helpless victims of culture, devoid of any agency. Many of us from middle class background in the south have adopted that frame of reference to our rural sisters. (Report of the first African feminist forum 2006, page 11-12.)
We should mobilize and organize with a clear understanding of the contestation about or diversities from, in particular, cultural and religious perspectives. This does not come without challenges. The notion of African feminism itself brings us to the slippery slope in which the notions of culture and religion are negotiated and mediated of ten by agents other than ourselves. “Culture is a double edged sword”. (“Reclaiming our spaces” executive summary of the 1st African feminist forum, page 6.)